Because Nothing Ever Ends
by AshleyKay
Summary: The dreams starts when she's sixteen. They're always in red and when she wakes she can smell the forest and the pool. Justn/Harper. Last Unicorn/Wizards crossover. Final Chapter Up.
1. another sound followed them

**Title: **Nothing Ends (1/?)

**Rating: **G

**Spoilers: **All Waverly Place episodes, excluding Future Harper. And all Last Unicorn, excluding, of course the ending.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing.

It starts when she's sixteen, the memories washed over her like light. Her grandmother's voice, the way it had been before the silence, the drooping eyes, the collapsing of her back till she shriveled like a flower in shade. Harper felt as if she was collecting to many old things behind her eyes. But still she remembers that it had been something about the sea, and green grass. Amelia's voice whispered in her head, the way it was soft, wide, delicate and fierce, had unfolded stories of things that were. Had talked about a great relative that had done something, and she doesn't quite recall beyond the imagined dream of a forest that never fell to autumn.

There were other things she doesn't like to think of, the constant sound of her parents voices low and frozen.

_(Maybe, Amy, you shouldn't have married me.)  
_  
The glares that pass over white china and her grandmother's vacant eyes.

_(No I shouldn't have. You never do anything right.)  
_  
The things she's not suppose to see. The things that lurk above water glasses and leak through walls.

_(It wasn't always like this Nana. But her Grandmother's fingers are still. And she doesn't flinch at the hushed anger dripping through the walls.) _

She doesn't think of her Grandmother as she was. But sometimes, when the dreams and the cold become to much she'll sit by her Grandmother's bed and hold her papery hands.

_(The Unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.)_

She doesn't remember the stories completely. They're lost between her tongue and her teeth.

It's all haze in her sleep. She wakes to the ache of knowing but the emptiness of forgetting.

_(They passed down the road long ago, the Red Bull ran close behind him.)  
_  
Red becomes her least favorite color.

_(There's no such things as happy endings...) _

The night of her sixteenth birthday, she dreams of a pool of water, clear enough to see herself in.

_(because nothing ever ends.) _

She is beautiful.

PPPPPPPPPP

He doesn't mean to. Not really, but he does. He notices the dark shade under her eyes. The way her fingers sweep over her own hands, as if she were afraid.

She isn't hyper.

Oh she laughs, she moves but something feels as if it were a dream. As if all the moves she's making are shadows.

He wishes he didn't see, wishes for the hundredth time in as many days, that he could go back to the blindness, the dark of life before Harper became someone beyond a passing thought.

But she's there, and she's moving in the world as if it were new to her and he notices.

Because they love the silence and the black and white. Because somewhere between her annoying giddiness and the glow of her in darkened theater rooms, he started to care. Not love, not want. But care if she was having a bad day, or if her feelings were hurt.

So the fret of her nails bitting in her hand. The stretch of her eyes as she looks widely around her, creep into his mind.

It won't let him go.

Alex doesn't see. It isn't in her nature to notice others, not till it becomes to obvious. And it's not because she doesn't care, Alex, he knows, despite her selfishness, her love of mirrors and images, cares. Cares about the old hippie and him and Max and Harper. Would break herself open for others, but she can not see.

He swallows and looks down the hall to his math class.

But he does.

PPPPPPPPPPP

The world feels new around her. As if she were born all over again. Only.

Only, she remembers. She remembers the harshness of all the things that had happened. The warmth of things too.

She was part of things she couldn't name and she was part of the only thing she knew.

_(You're in the story with the rest of us now...)_

Magic.

Beasts.

Immortality.

She knew them.

She had them in her.

She started side long at Alex. Magic.

Truth.

She should tell Alex the truth.

But she wasn't sure of it.

Couldn't pin it down with words, that didn't sound odd.

_My hundred years great grandmother was a unicorn once. I might have some of her in me. The Red Bull will kill me. I am a part of it. I am all of it.  
_  
Unicorns were not something she could look at her friend and say.

Long ago, before her parents fighting. Before her Grandmother withered. She had loved them, loved the idea of unicorns dearly. Her Grandmother had grew it in her, had told her stories (truth), had brought to life all the little parts of history.

Then her brother died.

And her parents fought.

Her grandmother shrunk into wrinkles and age.

And Alex had told her that unicorns were for babies. Just like communication was for twenty year olds.

She kept the dreams of them to herself. Kept the glass figurines and the charm in a locked box.

She was far to old for make believe.

She sighed and looked at the curve of Alex's face again.

Truth.

Magic.

It seemed too silly to say. Even if it was true.

Justin plopped into the space between them.

Magic.

To old to make believe.

_(She was even older than she looked.)_


	2. the tiny, dry sound of a spider weeping

1.

She hears Robert call to her in her sleep.

But it's not her name that forms on his lips.

"Amalthea."

Something in her burns. Rises up at the name, something she had long forgotten.

Robert looks as she had last seen him, sixteen and old and his brown hair was wavy and wild.

But the dream is dark, covered in emptiness. And beyond the call of her long dead brother is someone who looks surprising like Justin. His face thirty and tired.

But his eyes.

They are dust and bones and ages to old.

She wakes up knowing and shaking.

The red bull will come for her.

2.

"Something's different."

Alex's eyes slide to her brother. "I know."

"Well aren't you going to ask her?"

"When did Harper become any of your business?"

"I'm just worried."

He wants to tell her about the look in Harper's eyes. The slow new way she walks, her arm extending and reaching and it's as if she's all alive and doing everything for the first time.

He wants to whisper to his sister that Harper has invaded him and captured him and he can think of nothing else. Like for the first time she can not be overlooked.

He feels his palm's sweat and itch.

"Well, so am I. Only I don't know how to ask, sometimes it's like she wants to say. Only her eyes. They're not the same." Alex's head shakes and Justin can see the shiver on her shoulder.

"I know."

"How? You've spent the better part of your life avoiding Harper."

"There's something... new about her."

"You see it to?"

He nods and looks long ways down the hall. Harper is walking slowly toward them and somehow the sea of students parts for her. Her dresses are still the same, themes and fruit, but somehow it fades to her face. As if she were wearing gold and silk or nothing at all. The thought bleeds red to his cheeks and when their eyes catch from the halls, he knows she can see his thoughts.

And from somewhere he can't name comes the echo of face he had never seen, bitter and old, a women who's eyes dripped sand.

3.

"Mother."

The woman doesn't turn and Harper feels the pull of that hidden self.

"I know."

Her mother turns then and sees.

"It's all nonsense."

She shakes her head. "No, it isn't. I've seen the pull and the call of her. Of myself."

"Don't." Her mother's hand rise to her face. "Don't let it Harper. Don't answer the call."

"How can I not?"

Her mother's laugh bounces bitterly from the walls and the sound spins painfully in her stomach.

"You know how."

"I think he's coming for me."

"Of course he is. He'll never stop till the thing in you lies dormant."

She shivers.

Cursed, poor Amalthea. Destined to either die with the others or lie forever in dying houses.

She could, even being only part immortal smell the stench of her decaying flesh.

She was collapsing around herself and she felt for the first time mortal and weak.

"Mother?"

"Go."

When she closes the door, she can hear the soft dry sound of her mother's sobs. She remembers suddenly myths and spiders and wonders if freedom was really enough.

4.

She finds Justin waiting on the street below.

She thinks of the other in her dreams, with the old eyes.

"Tell me what's wrong."

She thinks maybe she should. But she's afraid.

She thinks somehow he may be the key to keeping Amalthea locked away.

Or to setting her free.

She isn't sure which would be worse.

"I don't know how."

He takes her hand and she can feel the coursing of his magic at her fingers.

"Whatever it is, Alex and I can help."

"I know you."

His fingers go to her chin and he looks hard into her eyes.

His gasp is loud and drowns out the horns and bustle of city streets.

He knows her too.

5.

"Unicorn?" Jerry's knuckles are white and she sees Justin's chin in his face.

"My Grandmother, before she lost..." She feels a lonely feeling rise in her throat. "She use to tell me of it. The past. Only I thought it was a story. Then before my last birthday. The dreams started. Just small ones. A face hear or there. Always a forest. Then the day of my sixteenth, I saw myself in the pool. It was me or I was her. We...we were the same."

She can feel Justin's eyes trailing her back and beside her Alex's fingers are laced through hers.

"But they died out long ago. A wizard, he turned her human. She married and had children and died of old age."

"I think she did. Sort of." She shakes her head. "I remember him. Lir. And the wizard I know of him too. I've seen him in the dreams. He looks...he looks almost exactly like Justin. Only his eyes are different."

"How?"

"Old. So old, his face is young and unlined but his eyes. He's so much older than he seems."

"That's impossible." Jerry's head is shaking and his fingers are clutching hard to chair. Theresa is watching her closely and she can see the tears lining her eyes.

"How so?" Justin's voice seems worn.

"So many great grandparents ago, there was a family wizard-" Jerry's face falls and he starts shaking his head again. "But it was to long, he'd be so long dead now."

"What?" Max sounds much older and less silly. Harper can feel his breath from feet away. Awed.

"He looked like Justin, he was suppose to be a great failure as a wizard. Couldn't do more than card tricks and slide of hands. He supposedly worked under the Great Nikos. He turned a unicorn into a human to once. But that Nikos finally gave up on him and turned him away."

Harper remembered the story, even though she was sure she'd never heard it before.

The unicorn had married the girl and killed the poachers, and there had been no children. Something about violets stuck with her.

The other unicorn had died of old age to.

"I know it's true." Jerry looks at her for the second time since she told him. His eyes meeting hers. His voice was hollow and afraid. "I know because I see the forest in your eyes."

Her throat tightened and she heard a voice old and broken and mean from far away say something similar to her.

"What do we do?"

"We can find a way to protect you from the red bull." Jerry's eyes pointed down and Harper knew there was no way to stop the red bull. Not without trapping Amalthea.

"He'll come for me. Maybe it's for the best. To let it all end. To stop the running and the hiding and to go with my kind. To finally rest with them."

"You can't." Alex's fingers tighten around hers.

"I feel him nearer to me everyday." Harper peers back at Justin. "The Red Bull will not stop till he has me."

"You're mother and grandmother. He didn't come for them."

It's the one thing she hasn't figured out. Why not them. Why her.

But something in her bones tells her that this time it must end.

She is tired.

6.

She sleeps beside Alex.

Her friends breath is shallow and long and she can see years roam over Alex's face.

She's growing older and she's dying.

So is Harper.

The house is burning and there is only the escape of the Red Bull.

Somewhere between the dawn raising and dying she falls asleep.

The wizard is waiting for her.

His old eyes haunt her. And she sees the world again. With his fingers twisting her to come with him.

When she wakes, she knows why it has come to her.

7.

"Why are you so ready to give up?"

"I'm not. It's not about giving up. It's about letting go."

"Same thing."

She laughs and Justin mouth draws a line.

"I don't want you to leave Harper. Neither does Alex."

She knows.

But sometimes it isn't enough.

She touches his face and let's her hand rest on his shoulder. For the first time she isn't thinking of Justin in romantic dreams. He's blurred around the edges to her now. Something to hold on to but that will fade because nothing can be done.

She can feel his muscles tense under her and knows he will kiss her.

She thinks of Lir and Amalthea. Thinks of being human and empty and dying and love.

She turns from him before his lips can land.

"It would never work, Justin."

"Why not?"

"You never saw me before I was part unicorn. Why now?"

"I saw you before-"

"You never wanted me then, don't lie. I scared you and I understand why, I'm not proud of how crazy I can be. But I won't deny it either. Having this part of me open let's me see. It calms me or something. And I know that having you want me now would be a lie. Or worse, because say you do care for me or see me. The red bull will still come and I will still be gone. And there's nothing to be done."

"You don't have to leave."

"I think it's time for an ending don't you?"

"Why with you?"

"Why not?"

Later, after she's gone home and kissed her sleeping mother goodnight and left her father a note, she walks into the heart of the city. Feels the hot lights on her skin and reminds herself not to be afraid.

Not of Haggard or the bull.

She will be free soon.

8.

"You do look like Justin." Alex's voice is strained and she feels suddenly like crying.

She isn't sure why.

Schmendrick face is heavy and strange and Jerry feels his pulse spike. "Are you really-"

Schmendrick nods. "Yes. I'm really him."

"But how?"

"A curse from Nikos. Till I find my true magic, I will not stop walking the earth, never aging."

"But then how did we-"

The cursed wizard grins, it holds no joy. "I feel in love. I thought. Surely I would figure it out in time. But I never could and my Molly aged and grew and she died. And our children did the same. As so they're children, till you."

"Why now?"

"Harper is the first to choose the bull."

Alex stands quickly. "There's a way to save her from the bull?"

"She has to choose to remain pure. Virginal. She can't be blemished. That's what unicorns are all about. To stain them is to trap them. So her mother and her grandmother and the ones before her, to the time of Amalthea herself, each chose love or ran from the thoughts of the old time but giving in to lust. And each passed on the unicorn to their children."

"But how, it wasn't that way with Nikos unicorn."

"The last bit of magic I gave her. I cursed her to continue on. I thought that way I could at least try and find a way to save her. I thought I was doing her service."

Max's red face shook. "But instead you cursed Harper's family. They all die or go silent."

Schmendrick nods. "Yes. That's the way of it. It was the Red Bull that killed Robert."

"Shouldn't that have ended it then?"

"No. Robert was male. The trait of the unicorn can exist in him but Almathea can not be set free from him. The part of Amalthea that lives can exist only in pure females."

"So there's nothing that can be done." Theresa wrings her hands and looks to Jerry.

Her husband shakes his head.

"Either Harper traps Amalthea again. Passing her on to her own children, or she dies and sets her free to face the Red Bull.

9.

"I won't let you die." Justin's face is inches from her own. She knows how easy it would be. She'd kiss him and his fingers would linger at her hips.

But it wouldn't be real.

"There has to be a happy ending sometime."

"Only at the end."

"And isn't it." She knows it's Amalthea he's seen. Her beauty beyond and her newness and her immortalness that had changed his sight of her. But she had wanted him so long, wished that he could see who she was. She didn't think it would be so mean of her to leave this world with his kiss.

"It doesn't have to be Harper." She balances on her toes. His breath warm and young and kisses him. And his fingers do fall to her hips and she smiles against his mouth.

She knew kissing him would be this.

Her hands on his neck and his gathering her up to him.

There's heat and them and it would be simple to lean her head back and take his kiss on her neck and here in the alley she'd have him.

She give in to the lust and the want and she'd live.

The lights above them and the sleepless city moving around.

His hand slides to her thigh and she can feel him through her dress and she lets go.

Gives in just for a second to how much it could be.

But when her eyes open she knows that it can not.

"No."

"But..."

"I know what you're trying to do. I do. And part of me. Most of me is thankfully. But what of my children. Theirs. To die or to burn. To punish them for my fear." She shakes her head and pulls away from him. "I can't."

And in the distance. She can feel the Red Bull come to shore.

"We have to go to the docks."

"Why?"

"The others are waiting for me there."

10.

When they get there Schemdrick is standing at the waters edge.

"I'm sorry."

She smiles. "I am too. I'm sorry I couldn't make you into a really magician."

In the horizon the sky turns red.

The bull is large and for a moment she is afraid.

She doesn't look to Justin or Alex.

She thinks of Amalthea, herself. And opens her arms wide.

She can hear the Latin falling from Schmendrick's lips.

Then there is the blackness.

11.

The unicorn bucked beneath the Red Bull, her horn sinking into his fire and imagined flesh.

She would not fall so easily as the last time.

Behind her the unicorn could hear the gasps and the smell of her dead family.

She bucked again and ran toward the bull.

And from the sky she felt the rain.

She could see the white heads of the other unicorns in the sea.

Trapped and held there by the bull.

She charged a final time.

The sky poured and red flamed from the sea.

They were free.

She turned slowly and touched her horn to the girl.

She could not weep though she felt full of tears.

Raising her head to the sky she ran.

She refused to look at the other mortals.

12.

When she opened her eyes she saw the blur of Schmendrick, his fingers at her throat.

"You are alive!"

She felt sore and tired but almost as if the unicorn was never apart of her.

"Yes."

It's Alex that helps her up and it's her best friends arms that wrap around her and her best friend's lips that keep whispering and her eye's that keep crying.

Harper holds her as hard as she can.

"I can't believe it."

"Amalthea she touched you with her horn."

Harper nods and looks up to find Justin's eyes on her. "Yes. I could see her. She was in my head. She touched me and thanked me."

"Will she be back?"

"I don't think so Max. Unicorns aren't meant for staying in cities."

Around them the dawn was lighting up the sky.

13.

"Are we every going to talk about it?"

"About what?" She still couldn't meet Justin's eyes.

"Us. Kissing. More than kissing." His eyebrows raised with each sentence and she almost laughed.

"I know why you did it and we don't have to think about it to much-"

"I did it because I wanted to. I mean I know it wasn't like that before-"

"Amalthea is gone."

"Duh. I know that Harper. I don't know why you won't believe me but I wasn't in love with Amalthea. The unicorn wasn't what I saw in you."

She casts him a look. "Really?"

"Really. I know that I wasn't always into you. But know I can't stop thinking of you and it has nothing to do with the part of you that's gone."

She nods.

"Maybe we could go slow. Silent movie and dinner."

"A date this time." His grin is slow and she matches it.

"Yeah, a real one."

She thinks quickly on Schmendrick, who was mortal now, of Amalthea her ancestor and of that old story that was still about her and them all. She smiled to herself. Nothing, she thought, ever really ended after all.


End file.
